/* NOTICE posted 30 December 2019

I am archiving much of my old code from when I was first learning to program. The code in this repository is embarassingly bad, and it's not how I would write code to do something similar today. Please don't take this repository as an example of my programming habits and knowledge; look at my more recent repositories instead. */

Tapelion

A collection of programs for reading and writing data on cassette tapes with modern computers. You should definitely fork the hell out of this and ask me all about it! My email is dante.j.falzone(AT-SIGN)protonmail.com

HOW TO USE THESE PROGRAMS.

0. It is advised that you should make a directory called "tapelion", like so:

   mkdir ~/tapelion

1. Place all the programs into the tapelion directory.

2. Source the "scripts.sh" file, like so:

   source scripts.sh

3. To write to a tape, use the following steps:

   0. Plug the line out (headphones/speaker jack) of your computer into the line in (microphone jack) of your tape deck. Make sure that a writable tape is loaded in the tape deck. Also make sure that sox is installed and will work with your line out.

   1. Use the command tapelion_write to write information to the tape. It will prompt you to type in a string. As of version 3, valid characters include the full ascii character set.

   2. Make sure that your tape deck is recording when you press ENTER to record your string. It is advised that you should listen to the data transfer because data is beautiful so that you know when to stop recording.

4. To read from the tape, use the following steps:

   0. Plug the line out from your tape deck into the line in to your computer.

   1. Use the command tapelion_read. Enter in the amount of the tape you wish to read. The program will give you a prompt asking if you would like to use error checking; you can try this, but it is slower, more complicated, and more prone to bugs.

   2. Play the tape while Tapelion loads data from it. Stop the tape when the data transfer is finished. The data stored in the tape will be printed to stdout at the bottom of your terminal.

Dependencies:

Python:
    pip3, aubio, pyaudio, numpy, wave
C++:
    g++
Other:
    Bash
    portaudio19-dev (for Pyaudio)
    sox